New Grammar Schools: good or bad?

[thing47]

I see Liz Truss has announced she is in favour of creating more grammar schools (Rishi Sunak has opted for saying he will allow existing ones to expand, which is in keeping with current Conservative philosophy). What does everyone think of this? A good idea, or not? I know we have quite a lot of teachers on this board, be interested to hear what you all think.

For instance my ds will seek out and read (at his leisure) words, language, history etc. He was telling me yesterday he's learnt about 4 new different measuring techniques (que a long explanation on said techniques that I don't understand) and said it with great enthusiasm and detail. He'll talk of the 20s and 30s pre war as if he was there and have a favoured point in history beyond your usual school subjects. The way his brain retains all this information and how he can articulate the context and language is astonishing. It goes way beyond being in top set science or maths for instance. Some kids just learn this stuff and seek it out when not in school because its of general interest.

I agree children shouldn’t be pigeon holed age 10. The biggest effect will be on those who are poor, have SEN, are recent immigrants etc, so basically the ones who are more vulnerable and deprived. Personally I prefer the comprehensive system but think that we have to accept that different needs require different things. I think teaching in ability sets can be helpful as long as they are re-assessed regularly. And there seems to be a pervasive view that SEN students must have low ability. This isn’t the case at all, most SEN does not impact on intelligence but it does pose a barrier to learning making it more difficult to show ability. There is a gap in provision for the able who also have SEN which is best met by proper support in mainstream schools. Primary schools are often very averse to diagnosing SEN so often those kids don’t get any help until secondary (or often no help at all!)
the fact that we have many high achievers who failed the 11+ and grammars replacing their own students at sixth form with those from the local comp shows that the selection process really wasn’t fit for purpose.

Well yes a very small percentage of the population fit the criteria for ‘genius’. But they generally only have that ability in limited subjects. And quite often they are neurodiverse so have other challenges. And some people have absolutely brilliant minds for non academic subjects. But those people are a tiny minority even in a very selective school. The most import thing is still good old fashioned hard work. And self motivation. Tutors are ok up to a point but generally it falls over at some point as kids get older and don’t blindly follow the will of the parents

It's not about being genius or having other challenges. Some children just have the type of brain which "gets" academics without needing to try really hard.

I agree about the tutoring though, as in parents getting their kids tutored to the max because the kid will eventually need to go it alone and not all people enjoy an academic career, certainly if they've been pressured into it.

I think grammars in theory are not bad IF the alternative is seen as just as desirable (ie providing equivalent or better education for less academic kids - eg bigger choice in subjects, smaller class sizes, more extra curricular).

Really, how on earth can that possibly work? The problem with secondary moderns is that expectations will be low and good teachers won't want to work there. There is absolutely no way to avoid that problem, because the whole premise of a secondary modern, literally, is that it's the school for the exam failures. Building snazzy new science blocks and offering fencing classes and stuff is not going to make that problem go away.

Terrible idea. Fucking tories

I think the opposite- bloody Labour shutting the grammar schools, the only time a child from a disadvantaged background can get a good education.

Yes, you get well off parents (Corbyn's parents for example) taking spaces when they could indeed pay for private school but I don't begrudge it because it makes the school more diverse. My son is on FSM and he has well off friends and it doesn't cause a divide, it makes his aspirations higher, he sees how they live in comparison to his council house.

They take bullying much more seriously then comp in my local area, this is my experience.

Though different schools and areas aren't the same this is my personal experience before I'm piled on.

@ElephantLover I agree with you totally. DC1 has legacy confidence in his own ability issues from his grammar school days. They are fine for the super-competitive who thrive on trying to outdo their peers but less good for those with good brains but less drive to succeed.

@Itiswasitis90 how would you feel about the system of your child failed the 11+ and a child who had been heavily tutored or attended private school got in over them? Would you be thrilled for them to attend the alternative, because if not it’s a rubbish system. All children are entitled to an excellent education. Not just those who pass a test on a certain day at 10 years old.

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are regularly not getting into grammar schools because they are not tutored for years to pass the test. It’s absolutely not the way children from disadvantaged get a better education. It may be only your experience but the system should be based on all experiences, not one persons. What if a child 👧 a amazing at maths but severely dyslexic and struggles with English. What school do they go to? It may be only your experience but surely you have to see beyond that.

What if a child 👧 a amazing at maths but severely dyslexic and struggles with English. I don't think it's just grammar schools that are guilty of this though. DN who is very good at English, was not good at maths (barely scraped a 4 at GCSE) so was put in the 'lower half' of the year for this reason. She was clearly much cleverer on the humanities side than her 'relegation' showed her to be. In the end her parents intervened in Year 9 and asked her to be moved over to the higher achieving cohort side. She didn't do well in the STEM subjects but aced (8s and 9s) her other six GCSEs.

@LouisCatorze - I agree! Our experience seems to have been similar.

Given a second chance I'd put my DC either in a good comp or a good indie for secondary - somewhere that has a good mix of all abilities, interests and competitiveness. Considering this for my second DC even though we are in a grammar area.

I would be disappointed if my child didn't pass and probably be a bit bitter, like many people on here.
My child has always been on middle tables for maths and English and never been gifted. In yr 4 the teacher said he was below average, so when holidays and weekends came along we worked hard (2 hours a day), I don't have the money to take my child on holiday or activities.

Resources are generally free online and for nvr the book was £6.

If you think throwing money at a tutor for 2-4hours a week will make you pass the test, you are wrong. There was lots of children in my sons class, who's parents done that and they didn't pass because the parent(s) need to work with the child.

It's not about being gifted in one area, it's about working hard and an all rounder.

@user1477391263 - some kids would prefer to go to a school that does a mix of vocational and academic subjects, longer time spent on core subjects if required.

if you make it aspirational to go to non grammar schools (like apprenticeships are aspirational), then I don’t see this as a problem. Not all kids want to go to oxbridge or Russell group unis. It might provide a different focus for education but equally good (depending on child).

The problem inherent in this theory, though, is that how do you decide who are the less academic kids? The 11+ doesn't do this, all it does is provide a snapshot of which DCs are able to pass a very particular type of test (which isn't curriculum-based) on a single day at the age of 10.

Who honestly thinks that making irrevocable education decisions at 10 is a good idea? And if you do, I can tell you that all the pedagogic research shows (or showed, I admit to being a few years out of date) that educational attainment is not linear. With the exception of a few brilliant outliers, most DCs experience peaks and troughs throughout their childhood so a school system needs to reflect this rather than pigeon-hole too early.

It's hard to explain tbh. Some brain are just.. they get it. I don't know how but they do, and they enjoy it (unlike me.)

The thing is, I have children who are like that. 2 of them.

Both comprehensive educated. One at Oxbridge and one at an elite institution for their specific passion. You don't NEED to have a grammar school to educate able children, or even unusually able children.

I have long posted on here about a 'special school' model:

• A good, highly funded and well-resourced comprehensive school system for the vast majority.


• A good, highly funded and well-resourced series of special schools model for those whose additional needs are so significant or specialised that they cannot be efficiently and effectively educated in a comprehensive setting.


• A good, highly funded and well resourced series of special schools for those whose academic ability is so extreme that they cannot be efficiently and effectively educated in a comprehensive setting because they are so rare - children with one or more areas where their ability is in the 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 level where they are unique within a normally-sized school. The nearest current equivalent would be the specialist music schools.

These schools should be co-located, as for example a child in the 'high ability' special school may in fact only need to attend it for Maths, but not for PE or Geography, and so would attend those lessons in the co-located comprehensive. Similarly, pupils in the more familiar 'special schools' should be able to attend comprehensive schools for parts of their education if relevant.

Importantly, admission for all of the non-comprehensive elements would be by EHCP, not by any form of mass entry exam.

People advocate for grammars using 'outliers'. There are very, very few genuine outliers - the majority of pupils in grammars are adequately bright hard workers with supportive parents, virtually identical in their educational needs to a significant cohort of students in the non-grammars.

This. We live in a similar area . Super selective grammar school down the road and normal grammar schools over the county boarders newrby.

DD failed her various 11+ exams by a long way, despite practice. She went to the local bog standard comp...... where she got 10 GCSEs all at 8 or 9 and 4 x A* in her A Levels. She is now at a top uni and heading for a 1st. If anyone is grammar school material, it's her. In fact, I would say she is top end of grammar school. The 11+ system totally failed to recognise her abilities.

We don’t really grammars in our corner of London, but a quick look at the nearest “super selective” - Latymer in Enfield - makes the argument that this type of school is accessible to all backgrounds look pretty iffy. The borough of Enfield has 25% of its state secondary pupils qualifying for FSM. So does Haringey, the neighbouring borough. The figure for state secondaries in England overall is 23.7%. At Latymer it’s 5.3%. If all it takes is the “right sort of brain”, why are children on FSM so under-represented?

I went to a comprehensive school in the 90s/00's (supposedly a golden age for finding). As a bright child, it was utterly utterly shit. Aspirations were low, behaviour was very poor. I was bullied relentlessly, but I kept on studying because I didn't want to give up. I changed school for sixth form and got into oxbridge - no one in my school had done that for years.

(We had mixed classes for the first year and about 25% of the class could barely read, certainly not well enough to study a very simple abridged version of Oliver Twist, like an "early readers" one, that I could have read easily at 7). The TA in our class was very busy and for me that year was a waste of time in many ways - you could have given me the text books on day 1 and I could have sat at home doing them and got to the same place (except in my maths class, where my teacher was absolutely phenomenal at differentiation and took no shit).

I am the kid that MN says "well bright kids will do well anywhere", but it took a huge mental toll on me having no friends because no one would be seen dead with me and it caused me serious MH issues.

I spent a lot of my life wishing that I had had the option of going to grammar school. In fact, my sixth form pretty much was a grammar school (was a church school but basically became not religiously selective at sixth form, kicked out anyone without 5 A*/C and B in chosen subject and gave places to kids like me) - it was heaven. The kids there were so nice and all wanted to learn.

I now live in a grammar county and I suspect my kids will get into grammar school in due course (I know many people say this, obviously, but my DD in particular is very like me and very much a bright self starter). If they don't get in, I'd probably consider sending them private, certainly over one of the options.

However, I don't agree with grammar schools. What I actually needed from school could have been achieved by a combination of better aspirations, better discipline (not hardline, or stupid technical infringements, but firm/fair/consistent approach) - I didn't need a system tailored for me, just one that felt less like a jungle.

Rather than focusing on the top 25%, we should be focusing on the bottom 25%. Some of them will have SEN and should be better supported in mainstream, some may be better in a proper SEN environment (30 kids in a class is not for everyone), some will need better behavioural interventions that better account for their circumstances. And ALL of those "bottom" 25% should have something to aspire to, not the prospect of failing their GCSEs and then being written off.

(For those looking at Kent, btw, you have to be very careful to compare within particular towns/areas, because some areas are very different in terms of deprivation and sociology economic mix etc, much more than Bucks - West Kent is far wealthier than many other areas, though private education also strips high performers out of WK schools),

The issue with tutoring is it isn't just the kids who have private tutors to get them through it. It's also the kids who have parents who basically get them through it. If a child is spending evenings and/or weekends prepping they are being tutored, either by their parents or by someone who is paid. And if you don't have parents who can do it themselves or pay someone else you are screwed. Very few kids are going to turn up and just be able to pass an 11+ paper as it isn't stuff covered in school. Even some of the maths was on concepts that a school might not have covered yet by the time the test is sat.

I don't think there's a good answer to trying to make the test fairer, so my alternative is to make all schools better and give everyone the chance of a decent education.

What I meant was - that the arguments for and against have been well covered - there's a wealth of evidence and when Teresa May tried to this back in 2017 we all discussed it to the point of utter exhaustion.

The point of my post was to bring up the myriad practical issues - supporters of grammars tend to talk as if there was some blank slate where they could be put down without upsetting anyone but no such universe exists. Everywhere there are schools and parents who would be hugely affected and will want to have their say.

If there is ever a serious plan to set up a new grammar then the campaign against needs to be very focussed on the EXISTING schools that will be affected and make sure parents understand the implications for THEIR children. A version of nimbyism for schools!

No child ever got a new bike for "passing" the exam for the secondary modern.

In grammar areas people put in a huge amount of effort to make sure that the 11+ makes the "right" choice for their child.

Pretending that the non-selective alternative can have equal status is belied by the actual behaviour of parents in every part of the world where selection exists.

Truss supports them because her kids go to grammar schools BUT they also went to independent prep schools to get them ready.....
Grammar schools can never fulfil the purpose they were designed to (my parents were both from v working class backgrounds and grammar schools changed their lives) - as there are too many sharp elbowed middle class parents desperate to avoid paying for education a la Truss.....

Pretending that the non-selective alternative can have equal status is belied by the actual behaviour of parents in every part of the world where selection exists.

Absolutely right. As evidenced by the number of people who don't support the grammar school system in general but who would nevertheless send their child(ren) to one if the option was available and they got in.

As @noblegiraffe succinctly point it, grammar schools are supported by people who believe their DCs would definitely get a place.

I notice nobody has yet attempted to answer my question this morning as to who thinks 10 is an appropriate age to decide on a child's future academic path…

But this isn’t correct. If people live in grammar areas they don’t have access to comprehensive schools so obviously can’t choose one. A secondary modern is not the same as a comprehensive. Not everyone with academic children supports the grammar system, however you can only choose a school that actually exists in your area